Saturday, October 6, 2007
Building success, not buying it
Last blog I wrote, I talked about how big market teams seem to take advantage of all the money they have an basically buy players. Well all the small market teams in the playoffs said pshaw to that. All three small market teams in the playoffs are winning their respective series in the ALDS and don't seem to be letting go of that vicegrip. The Indians, Rockies, and Diamondbacks all are, what my last post would consider, small market teams. How did these teams get to be so good using so little money? Great minor league systems, scouting, and trades for minor league players. Lets take the Indians for example; 15 of the 25 players on the active team, including all-stars Victor Martinez, Grady Sizemore, and CC Sabathia, all came up through the Indians farm system since 2002. Arizona has 17 players, including CY Young winner Brandon Webb, on their team. Colorado has 16 players, including all-stars Matt Holliday and Todd Helton, that came up through that farm system. What does that tell us about small market teams? They do more work to get the good players, but they also save the money the big market teams would spend. What lesson can we learn from all this? It doesn't matter how much money you have, it's all about how you use what's around you to do what you need done. If more teams had the forsight and knowledge of the Indians, Rockies, and Diamondbacks, there would be many more exciting endings at the end of September, like this year, than there have been over past years.
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2 comments:
I agree that you must develop your talent and build your team. I'm not a big supporter of buying big name players just to try to win,or "Yankeeism" as I like to call it. Although I'm against it, I'm not against winning. I believe that a good owner does whatever it takes in order to do that. If that means paying a player $252 million (Mr. Rodriguez, then do it. That strategy has been fairly successful for New York, so i wouldn't tell them to stop doing it. In the words of Al Davis, "Just win, baby!"
Jose, i completely agree with your post. From a business standpoint, buying big name players just to win makes a lot of sense. People will pay a lot of money to go see a team made up of All-Stars and you will win a few games. However, building a team through minor league systems obviously makes you more successful as you stated with 3 of the 4 remaining teams in the MLB being small market teams. Those players, mostly have come up together through the farm system and have good chemistry to go along with considerable talent; rather than the large market teams who have tons of talented players who have conflicting egos.
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